I love my kids. That’s the first thing that needs to be established. But, there are a lot of times that I don’t really like them.

Right now, I am taking a combination of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers. I have been on this regimen for quite a while ... a few years at least. I have been prescribed various other treatments over the past eighteen years. Things are relatively stable, now, but I am still “under treatment” and probably will be forever. Sometimes, though, I get busy or am away from home and I fall behind on my medication. Surprisingly, I can feel a difference after missing only a few doses. The thing that I notice first is how much I start to dislike my kids (and others) when my meds wear off. Essentially, I can feel myself slipping into a really short sense of patience with them and I get annoyed and/or angry with them pretty fast.

I have come to terms with the fact that I am someone who lives with a form of mental illness. I don’t really like this fact, but lots of people live with lots of health issues and we don’t make that big of a deal about most of them so mine shouldn’t be much different. But, what I don’t like is that I have to take medicine to feel like liking my kids. Without the meds, I really don’t like my kids. This makes me feel as if the way I really am is as a father that hates his kids, and it’s only through medication that he is able to not be instantly annoyed by them. (With the medication, things are still rough. I still struggle to find a sense of equilibrium with them, but it is significantly easier when I am fully medicated.)

Things have been extra rough chez nous recently. There has been a lot of yelling, a lot of locking of doors and taking away of privileges. There hasn’t been nearly as much “Home Can Be A Heaven On Earth” as I think we are supposed to have. It has been exhausting and kind of heartbreaking for my wife and I to feel the rollercoaster of moods, volumes, and changes in our home environment everyday over the past months.

This isn’t a cry for sympathy or anything like that. I have recently been making an effort to be a bit more “real” with the world. I am pretty bad at socializing, but I do feel like I am relatively good at writing, so this is a semi-comfortable way for me to try to connect with others and be a little more vulnerable (which is supposedly a healthy way to deal with stuff).

Until earlier this week I had never visited a French-speaking country. This, despite the fact that I minored in French in college and had a job speaking French for about six months.

My wife and I are in Europe for a month. We left Los Angeles on June 3 and we will be back on July 2. Both of us have been to parts of Europe before—Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary for me; Germany, Czechia, Austria, and Hungary for her—but neither of us have been to France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, or England (all places on our itinerary this month).1 We have talked about doing a trip like this ever since we got married (2003). But, stuff like this is expensive, and things like school, careers, kids, and life get in the way of ideas like that. But, this year brought a lot of big things: our fifteenth (!) wedding anniversary was last December, my wife turned forty in January, and she graduated with her Master of Music degree this past May. So, there is quite a lot of stuff to celebrate, and we decided now was the time to finally make this trip happen.2

Between us, my wife is definitely the one with vacation-planning skills. Once we decided “it is time,” she got to work looking for flights, booking hotels, etc. I think we booked our flights back in August, 2018, with some hotels, etc. following not terribly long afterward. She deserves most of the credit for all of that, though she did ask me to book a handful of the logistics as a birthday gift to her back in January. By February we were done and done (almost) with all of the logistical planning.3

But, a few days ago we flew from LA to Paris and then took a train to Brussels.4 Navigating Charles de Gaulle airport was pretty tricky, especially trying to figure out how to get to our train. Eventually, we decided it was time to ask someone for help. Of course, almost everyone that works for the airlines speaks English, but I really wanted to “have a go” with trying to not look like a dumb American that expects everyone to speak English. So, I approached the guy at the Air France help desk and just launched into my question: “Je dois trouver un train à Bruxelles. Il a été réservé avec Air France.” And, he just gave me what I needed to know (en français, bien sûr). Better yet, I understood 80-ish% (the important 80%) of the stuff he said!

In December, I decided it would be a good idea for me to take something of a “refresher course” in French. So, I signed up for Conversational French 1 at my local community college (not the one where I teach, as this class wasn’t in our schedule for the Spring 2019 semester). This class was (almost) entirely in French. Before the first day of classes, it had been a good 13+ years since I had spoken French or had anyone really check in on my fluency.5 The first few days were rough; I didn’t really follow much of what the professor was saying, nor did I feel confident saying much of anything. Things got better, of course, and, by the end, I was feeling significantly more confident talking with the other students and the professor. Still, when you talk with other students or a professor, you can always fall back on English when you get stuck (“Comment dit-on [insert English word]?”), so I was still pretty nervous as arriving in Paris got closer and closer. This question was my first entrée into the world or speaking French without training wheels since 2004/5. It felt nice to have some success.

I get it that my question was relatively simple. That’s a first-year-of-high-school-French level of question. Still, it felt really nice to have that validation from an actual Parisian. Also, he might have secretly been laughing at me, but he did a good job of hiding it.

Cactus to Clouds is big. If you want to complete this hike, preparation is key. Training is probably the most important form of preparation. Get out there. Climb lots of hills. Walk a lot. This trail will clock in at about 18 miles, with an elevation gain of 10,500 feet! (8,000 of those are within the first half!)

The other prep you need to keep mind is to have the right gear. Some people like to go a little (or a lot) overboard with buying new stuff—which you can do for this if you want—but this hike probably won’t equate you to spend a ton of money getting new stuff. Here is what I recommend.

Daypack

You will need a decent backpack. You don’t need anything too fancy, but a school backpack probably won’t cut it. I highly recommend something with a light frame and that will accept a hydration bladder. You will need to carry a lot of water, so there needs to be enough room to carry a gallon of water.

Here is my pack:

This pack has a nice stiff frame. This helps to distribute the weight across my hips and sternum. Without the frame, this pack might feel off balance with areas that feel “heavier” than others. This pack will also accept a hydration bladder up to 3 quarts, which gets me a long way toward all of that water-to-carry goal. It has some loops to carry trekking poles, which is handy. (More on the poles, later).

Hydration

Carry a lotof water. The first 9 miles are pretty brutal. You’ll climb 8,000 feet and won’t have access to any water. Also, since you’ll be on the desert side of the mountain, it’ll the air will be dry and it could be hot. (Even though we’ll be hiking in November, temperatures in the 90s are definitely possible once the sun starts to beat down on us.) I recommend at least a gallon of water for this first section. Then, when you get to the tram station, you can refill. I also recommend that you have some sort of electrolyte replacement option, either in addition to the gallon of water or as something you can mix with part of that gallon. I like to use a small bicycle bottle (already filled with water) and mix small powder packets into the bottle as needed.

Clothes

The temperatures will vary wildly over the course of the day. We will start before the sun comes up, but it will still be somewhere in the 70s, probably. If we are lucky, we will be able to stay ahead of the heat, but there is a chance it could get pretty hot before we reach the tram. Most of the trail is totally exposed (no tree cover) until around the tram station (9-ish miles and 7-ish hours in). Keep this in mind both for temperature and sun protection purposes. I am bald, so a hat is a must all day, but I would recommend it for everyone as the desert sun gets pretty grueling. Also, as the elevation gets higher, there is less atmosphere between you and the sun, which makes it even more likely that it will bake your face and neck.

The first time I did C2C, I wore shorts all the way to the peak. I started the day with short sleeves; when we got to the tram station I added a long-sleeved shirt. At the peak, it is cold; temperatures in the low-40s (or lower) are likely. So, I added some running tights underneath the shorts and added a fleece jacket, gloves, and “beanie” once I reached the summit. Last year, I wore pants at the start, but everything else was the same. We will arrive back at the tram after dark, so the temperature probably won’t rise much between the peak and the end of the hike. This time, I will probably start the day like this:

shorts (zip-off pants)

short-sleeved “technical” polo shirt (I like to use the collar as a sun shade (1980s preppy style)

headlamp

hat

sunglasses (once the sun comes up, of course)

By the end of the day, I will be wearing:

running tights and a long-sleeved “technical” shirt as a “base layer”

pants (zip-off legs)

a fleece jacket, beanie, and gloves

Given the amount of water and clothing you’ll need to park, you’ll find that your pack is 80% water/clothes. Plan on essentially filling you pack with water and clothes and then cramming munchies into the leftover space.

Footwear

You don’t need boots. Those are too heavy and are overkill. In fact, some nice solid trail running shoes would be better than boots. I like to “split the difference” a bit and go with some lightweight hiking shoes.

Also, wool socks are a must.

Food

There are a few options as far as food is concerned. First, you’ll need stuff to eat during the parking-lot-to-the-tram-station portion, which could be as long as eight hours. Once you get there, you can buy some food; there is a café at the tram station as well as a “convenience store” type of shop. Personally, I don’t want something that big while I am still “on the road,” so I just carry a lot of small stuff to eat throughout the day.

Trekking Poles

Trekking poles are definitely optional. Last time I didn’t use them and I think I suffered as a result. The poles come in handy when things get steep, especially when descending (at least for me). The poles provide a bit of stability, relieving some of the pressure off of your hips and knees to keep you balanced. Last year, I really struggled around miles 7 and 8 and then again before the peak; my knees and hip flexors were not pleased with me the next day. This wasn’t as much of a problem the previous year when I used the poles a lot more ... but I was also younger the first time :)

The trick to making the poles most effective is to use the loops as leverage. The loops should be behind your wrists with the strap beneath your thumb/palm; put pressure here. Most of the “propelling power” comes from the downward weight on your palms.

Training

But, of course, the most important preparation is training! I can’t really give you a proper regimen—there are lots of variables—but, my blanket advice is to just climb a lot of hills and spend a lot of time on your feet in the months before the trek. If at all possible, you should do a hike that includes at least 5,000 feet in elevation gain (and feel easily comfortable with that) within a month of embarking on Cactus to Clouds. If you are like me and live at a sub-4000’ elevation, you should get up high as much as possible as well. Honestly, though, I shouldn’t be giving out too much advice as this thing has kicked my butt both times I have done it. YMMV.

I was listening to Ben Harper’s album Diamonds on the Inside, today. As is kind of typical for Ben Harper, the album wanders a bit; there are great moments, and then there are kind points where it kind of rambles on, wearing out its welcome at times. This album isn’t new; it was released in 2003.* I have heard it several times before. But, it had been a year or more since I had listened. As a whole, the album is probably in the 6/10 range; if I could reduce it down to a five-song EP, it would definitely earn a higher score.

Sometimes, I listen too much like a record producer. Instead of just listening to a song and letting it be what it is, I often think of things that could make it better. I suppose that three degrees in music and a doctoral dissertation about mid-60s recording studio usage could do that to a person. When I should be enjoying the music, my head ends up in places like:

“Ooh. If there was a little more reverb on the guitar, there, it would sound better.”

“Man, I wish they would have waited one more phrase before bringing in the backing vocals.”

When I was listening to the title track, I caught myself thinking, “That spot, right there, would be perfect for a little bit of pedal steel.” Then, I remembered that I was talking about Ben Harper, one of the most accomplished slide guitar players around, and I was giving him advice on when/where to add some slide guitar in one or his songs. Who am I to be doling out this kind of “advice?”

Then, in the next verse ... some beautiful pedal steel countermelodies right where I thought they should be.

This isn’t me trying to do one of those “great minds think alike” comparisons or anything. I just found this to be kind of funny.

One more idea: I want the guitar in R.E.M.’s “Let Me In” (from Monster) to have even less definition. I want there to be no rhythmic distinction ... just a big wall of super-saturated fuzz. Then, when the tambourine and synth come in, it would kind of be like, “Oh, nowI can sense the beat.” Just an idea for you guys, Mike, Peter, Michael, and Bill (and Scott).

* I think I heard about it on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Ecclecticback when I was living in Pomona about a year after this. Actually, listening to FM radio, like a schmuck!

Overview

If it weren’t for Bon Iver’s 22, A Million, Nico Muhly and Teitur’s Confessions (Nonesuch, 2016) would easily be my favorite album of 2016. It’s hard to be succinct when describing this album, so bear with me as I do my sometimes-overly-wordy thing.

I discovered the Faroese singer-songwriter Teitur listening to FM radio back in 2009 or 2010. It was weird that I was listening to FM radio at all then, and it is weird that I found something that I liked. Specifically, I heard his song, “All My Mistakes,” from a compilation album called The Art of Peace, which was a benefit project for Tibetan freedom. “All My Mistakes” completely floored me—I literally pulled over so I could listen more attentively! After the song was over, the DJ said the name of the song and singer. Of course, I went home and tried to find whatever info I could on “Tighter.” Eventually, I figured out who he was (and how to spell his name). Check out Poetry & Aeroplanes if you want to hear what he “usually” sounds like.

I knew nothing about Nico Muhly before finding this album. This is a shame, as he is a pretty prolific American composer; he studied at Juilliard and later with John Corligano. We can chalk my ignorance up to having my head buried in the sand.

Interestingly, the compositions are performed by the Holland Bach Society. The orchestra plays according to the same style that it would if were performing its usual repertoire of music from the high-Baroque; vibrato is scant, there is a strong basso continuo (“Time to Dry” is even a chaconne!), and many of the longer notes feature some nice missa di voce. The orchestra’s dry, stark playing fits perfectly behind Teitur’s similarly thin voice, and it suits Muhly’s compositions pretty well. I’ll admit that, despite my early-music-snob credentials, I would never have thought that a baroque ensemble would suit contemporary composition and a pop singer so well.

Highlights

All of the compositions, save “Sick of Fish” and “Dog and Frog,” include lyrics and vocals (which I can only assume are Teitur’s). In all, I think “Describe You,” “If You Wait a Little Longer,” “Cat Rescue,” and “Don’t I Know You From Somewhere” are the album’s strongest songs.

Describe You

“Describe You” is the first track on Confessions. The lyrics make no attempt at a rhyming scheme or meter, which makes the song an interesting mix of rhythms and lyrical phrasing. To me, “Describe You’s” lyrics are a beautiful description of how hard it can be to put physical beauty into words. Read for yourself:

I was trying to describe you to someone. You don’t look like anyone I’ve seen before. I couldn’t say, “She looks just like Jane Fonda;” you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child. I think I was seven, or eight, or six. It was a movie about rural electrification. The movie, it was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They didn’t have any appliances and they had to use lanterns. They put poles across the countryside, strung wires over fields and pastures. There was an incredible heroic dimension. The movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to take away forever dark ways of life.

I was trying to describe you to someone. You don’t look like anyone I have seen before. I couldn’t say, “She looks just like Jane Fonda.” I couldn’t say, “Her mouth is a little different;” you don’t look Jane Fonda at all.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in poetry or literary art, but I think that is pretty imaginative and beautiful. To me, the idea of describing the woman as a “young Greek god” that will forever eradicate darkness seems absolutely original. Maybe I am wrong. 1

If You Wait A Little Longer

“If You Wait A Little Longer” is delivered (almost) one word at a time. The voice is accompanied, in unison, by a lute until the entire first phrase is completed. Not only are the lyrics revealed one word at a time, but Teitur repeats each word as he builds the phrase. It’s difficult to explain, but here is a transcription of the first line.

If. If you. If you wait. If you wait a. If you wait a little. If you wait a little longer. If you wait a little longer than. If you wait a little longer than you. If you wait a little longer than you normally. If wait a little longer than you normally would.

From here, Teitur continues this pattern, but doesn’t repeat the “If you wait” stuff. He simply picks up where that phrase left off (though he slips two words in instead of one a few times): “The most. The most amazing. The most amazing thing may. The most amazing thing may appear.”

Once we have made it through the whole sentence, we (finally!) get to hear the whole thing without interruption. Now, the song finally feels like it has started; the lute plays a steady accompaniment—with occasional harpsichord entrances—while Teitur slowly sings a new melody. After a few times around this new section, the song returns to the original melody along with the unison lute accompaniment, though he doesn’t drag us through that admittedly laborious (though very effective) delivery. Then, right at the end, we hear the next sentence: “Most likely, nothing will happen.” It’s almost as if the entire song is one big joke. Teitur makes us “wait a little longer” (over three minutes!) before he finally tells us what will happen if we wait.

The sense of anticipation this created is palpable. The first time I heard this song, I kept trying to figure out what was coming next. Those two times he sings two words instead of one throws our expectations for a bit of a loop, which adds just enough variety to keep it from being too predictable. Though the whole thing might come across as a bit cliché, it is also really effective. “If you wait a little longer than you normally would, the most amazing thing may appear. Most likely, nothing will happen.” And, the song ends on an unresolved dominant chord, bringing the whole “wait” thing full circle; keep waiting, and you’ll see that this thing goes nowhere. Clever.

Cat Rescue

I have never really thought that a song about a cat stuck in a tree could be cool, but, I have also never even thought someone would write a song about a cat stuck in a tree. Basically, this guy’s cat is stuck up in a tree, and no one seems to be able to get it to come down. “The fire department is no use,” he says, “and the tree people aren’t answering or calling [him] back.”

At first, Teitur’s voice is accompanied by three sustained chords; the voice waits until the third chord before it enters, then the orchestra holds the third one while he sings. After the first few times around, the orchestra takes off on its own, playing some repetitive rhythmic/harmonic figures. There are some playful textures between the violins, recorder, and lute. The second time the instrumental textures return, the mood is more somber. At one point we hear a solo violin lingering after the others have stopped. Eventually, the three chords from earlier come back, but there is an echoing idea from the bass and lute where the voice used to be.

Don’t I Know You From Somewhere

“Don’t I Know You From Somewhere” is the closest thing Confessions has to a traditional pop “single.” It is almost radio-friendly, with a catchy melody and singer-songwriter-esque structure and accompaniment.1

As we are used to by now, this song doesn’t even try to have an obvious rhyming scheme or metrical pattern; it’s just a bunch of sentences given to us mater-of-factly. This one is some sort of exploration of what it might be like to be a sushi roll:

If I were a sushi roll traversing through a Japanese kitchen, I would be mostly fascinated by the people there; their welcoming arms and their strange voices, their fingers flying around, immersed in conversation. I would like ask them a question: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

They would be too busy to answer to me, too hungry and happy with their lives, busy soaking up the atmosphere of this restaurant, with pictures of slinky fish on the wall, the sharp sound of knives, and the smell of soy and ginger still in their nostrils. I would be in awe of their breath. I could hardly wait to be lifted into their mouths and get broken in two, and lie there melting somewhere between the sadness of their tongue and teeth. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

An odd metaphor, to be sure, but really cool in my opinion. The narrator is so lonely and helpless that he’ll take any interaction with the world, even if that means all of those interesting people end up eating him. Weird, but kind of cool, I think. This is emphasized by the song simply ending without notice. Teitur says, “Don’t I know you from somewhere,” just like before, and the song just ends ... Maybe he got eaten! :)

Honorable Mentions

Though they are less great, “Small Spaces,” “I Smoke,” “Printer in the Morning,” and “Time to Dry” are all worth mentioning. “Small Spaces” is nothing but sustained chords with Teitur’s reverb-drenched voice singing about different rooms. “I Smoke” is a three-part composition with some surprises hiding in the accompaniment’s emphases. “Printer in the Morning” is a song about working in an office with an almost-continuous sixteenth-note part in the harpsichord; anytime someone could squeeze this line into a song is worth noting: “I love the smell of my printer in the morning. Forget ’bout coffee. Forget ’bout falling leaves or the smell of shampoo. It’s the smell of my printer in the morning that really makes my day.” As I mentioned earlier, “Time to Dry” is a textbook chaconne, as if straight out of Dido and Aeneas or Bach’s Musical Offering.

Conclusion

Confessions is certainly not most people’s “cup of tea.” It’s a weird combination of baroque-ish timbres and textures alongside Teitur’s untrained, thoroughly “poppy” voice. The lyrics are full-on prose, while being fully “poetic” in their descriptiveness. This is not an album to listen to in the car our on a run through the park, at least not the first few times around. So, find yourself forty-eight minutes that you can dedicate to listening on a nice-sounding sound system or through some good headphones and just listen.2 It’s a rewarding experience, and I think you’ll thank me one you’ve gone through it.

9.5/10

It turns out that this text is very closely based on a short story by Richard Brautigan. Actually, it’s almost an exact quote, so “based on” is the wrong word to use. Don’t worry: he got compositional credit. ↩︎

I think I think I am smarter than I am. In all actuality, I am pretty ignorant concerning almost everything. In fact, one of the few things I can truly say that I “know” is that I only understand a few things.

My general ignorance and lack of understanding applies even to things that I am supposed to understand. For instance, I earned a PhD in Musicology two years ago. So, one could easily assume that I, therefore, know everything there is to know about music, or, at the least, know most of what there is to know about music. I would argue, though, that I know next to nothing about music. Music is a huge topic, and the deeper I dig, the more interesting mysteries I find.

This is the case with everything. Everything is more complicated than we think it is. There is more to everything than even many experts are willing to admit. It sounds cliché, but it really is the case that the more you learn about something the more you realize how much you don’t know.

Behold, my crappy attempt at explaining who we know what we don’t know.

Most of the time, I think the “correct” answer is simply, “I can’t say for sure,” or, maybe, “It’s complicated.”

I took a general education humanities class back in 2002 or so. As a music major and amateur historian and voracious reader (back then ... I can hardly make it ten pages without dozing off anymore), I was pretty convinced that I did not need to take this class. My—admittedly idiotic—thinking was some combination of, what-could-I-possibly-learn-from-the-class and why-do-they-make-us-take-general-education-classes-anyway naïveté. I hear this gripe a lot, which frustrates me as I now totally get it; I try to remember the fact that I felt this same way when I was in my late-teens and early-twenties.

One of the best things I learned in that humanities class was the professor’s admonition that it is at the moment that you are absolutely sure of something that you are likely wrong. Re-examination is “knowledge’s” best friend. Are you certain that your ideas about how the world works are right? Time to step back and look at it again. Do you know that this or that political/social view is always superior? You’re probably wrong. I have been accused of being “incurious” or “stubborn” in the past, and those assessments were probably right. But, when I see a dead end on the horizon, my gut tells me that it is time to turn and pursue different paths, at least until I can see a reason to reassess that position; this too is probably wrong.

Sometimes I mistakenly fall back on my I-am-a-doctor-and-you’re-not or I-went-to-a-more-prestigious-school-than-you laurels, and, of all people, I should know how stupid that is. I am sorry about that. I am trying to be better.

I was invited to speak at the Music Association of California Community Colleges (say that ten times fast) 2017 conference in November. This year’s conference is in San Francisco.

As a “musicologist”—that is what my college degrees say I am, at least—I am supposed to try to publish articles and make contributions to the field. People with PhDs are supposed to submit papers to journals and thereby bring their academic discipline a little closer to understanding the world. As I have mentioned before, I just don’t find most of that very interesting.

I do, however, enjoy speaking at conferences. In the realm of academic meaningfulness, speaking carries less weight than publishing. But, it’s better than nothing. I have spoken at at least one music-related conference every year over the past several; should I ever get an itch to move into “higher” academia (outside the community colleges), those talks will give me something to point to as evidence of my academic chops.

When the MACCC folks sent out their Call for Presentations, they specifically mentioned that they were interested in hearing about things relating to popular/contemporary music. They also said something like, “Tell us interesting and innovative things you are doing at your college!” Methought, “I am doing something innovative and interesting with popular music at my college!” (at least I think I am).

For those unfamiliar: I direct a pop-music ensemble, called the Rock, Pop, and Soul Ensemble. We offer an AA/transfer program in Music Industry Studies. As this is a music degree, those in this program are required to perform just like any other music major. But, since this is a degree focused on the music industry (meaning it’s primarily about pop music), it seems necessary that the college have a pop-music ensemble. Hence the RPSE.

I took over directing the group in 2012. Before me, the group usually did concerts that were kind of like “greatest hits” shows revolving around a topic (e.g. pop vs. punk, or metal vs. Motown). I can see the value in this, but I wanted to take the group in a different direction.

Thinking about what to do with the group, I decided to treat the class a bit more like the way one might treat a symphony orchestra or choir: a performing group that focuses on the “great works” written for that ensemble. Orchestras play Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; choirs sing Palestrina, Bach, and Schubert; therefore, a pop-music ensemble would perform The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Michael Jackson. And, since orchestras usually play entire symphonies (the “complete” work), pop-music ensembles should perform entire albums. Not just any albums, of course: only those generally considered the “great” ones.

Given the fact that I was knee deep in my dissertation when I took over, the first album we tried was The Beach Boys’/Brian Wilson’s SMiLE. In hindsight, that was a dumb idea; it was way too hard and I didn’t yet have the directing chops to help us figure it out. At the end of the semester, I had the students help me pick the next semester’s repertoire; we settled on Rubber Soul.

Though I may be out-of-the-know, I think this is an innovative—perhaps even unique—approach to the emerging field of college-level popular music ensembles.

If you happen to be in San Francisco on November 18, and listening to me rattle on about what we are up tochez Cuyamaca, I will hook you up with a front row seat. If coming to our concert is more your thing, come see us perform on November 27!

Firstly, the rallies, protests, and violence that took place in Charlottesville, VA were horrible. I have virtually no patience with anyone that wants to defend the “Unite the Right” organizers, attendees, or their goals. You can call me whatever sort of “-ist” you want to, but I will not tolerate Neo-Nazis, the KKK, or any other my-race-is-superior-to-yours or we-should-push-you-out-of-“our-country”-because-of-your-race-or-culture vitriol (and, no, Black Lives Matter does not believe this), and there is no equivocating Neo-Nazi marchers with anything other than pure ugliness and idiocy. And, if you are going to march alongside said KKK idiots, or agree to speak at an event they are celebrating, you support them as far as I am concerned. Similarly, failing to denounce this belief and activity, or to blame “many sides” for this stuff, makes you their defender; what could be easier than denouncing Nazis or the KKK? Someone was killed at a rally supported by Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other awful ideologues. How is anything about the “other side” relevant at that moment?

I have two kids: an eleven-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. My wife and I decided that we simply had to talk with them about what happened a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the world is a pretty horrible, baffling place sometimes, and it seems dishonest to pretend otherwise.

But, how do you explain the KKK to an eight year old? What sorts of analogies are appropriate to talk about white supremacists and Neo-Nazis?

My daughter is a very sensitive person—to a fault, sometimes—and it became obvious to us when she finally “got it.” She felt so much sympathy for the people effected by the protests, the fatalities most of all. She has two very good friends (a set of twins, actually) that are African-American. They live across the street. The idea that some people might think these girls were somehow less-than, maybe even sub-human, was heartbreaking for her.

We also tried to explain the concept of “white privilege.” Basically, we told the kids that they have been given—as have my wife and I, and our parents, and our grandparents, ad infinitum—a lot of breaks in our lives. People have been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt and we have a lot of opportunities that simply exist, just “because.” Others, including the girls across the street, often aren’t given those things. In fact, it was not that long ago that their family members were slaves owned by people who simply inherited less melanin and an imperial worldview.

Our daughter cried; our son didn’t, but it was clear that he was affected by our conversation. My wife and I are trying to raise conscientious and thoughtful kids. I would love it if this didn’t necessarily result in hurting them at the same time. I am well aware of this statement’s naïveté, but that doesn’t make me wish for it any less.

I minored in French in college. There was no real “reason” for me to do that, at least no practical reason—I have never been to France or Québéc or any other Francophone locale—other than the fact that I just really liked my French classes in high school and felt like I was relatively good at it. During my last year of college, I actually worked at a call center speaking French full time. I got pretty good at talking about shampoo, laundry detergent, and various health supplements over the phone en français with les Québécois.

As part of my foreign-language study I had to read a handful of books in French. I really liked La Peste (The Plague) and Le Château de ma Mère (My Mother’s Castle), but Descartes and Molière were harder for me.

As part of my MA and PhD coursework, I had to pass language proficiency requirements. The requirement was one language for the MA (Latin, French, Italian, or German), and two for the PhD (one of which must be German). To meet the proficiency requirements, we had two options: take a written test (basically, translate into English an article in the foreign language), or, take two semester of college-level classes in that language, and come out with an average GPA of 3.5. (One of these methods is clearly harder than the other.) I took the French test during my first semester. The German requirement, for the PhD, took me a while to complete. I had virtually no experience with German before grad school, so I took the two-semesters-of-college-level-classes route. I remember almost none of the German I learned, save a few phrases/words here and there.

Almost all books have the title and author written on the spine. This way, it is easy to know which books are which even when they are placed on a shelf or in a stack. In English, the title, author, etc. is written from the top to the bottom. So, the book, Moby Dick would have the letter “M” somewhere above the letters “oby.” But, in some other languages, French being one of them (and German, and Spanish, and others, I imagine), the words are written from the bottom to the top. Les Misérables would have the letter “L” below the following “es.”

If I am browsing titles in a bookstore or library, I often tilt my head to the right, slightly; this gives my brain a little help in reading the sideways words. As I said, I have never been to France or Québéc (or inside a library in a German-speaking country), so I need someone to answer a question for me: Do people walk around bookstores and libraries with their heads tilted to the left in these places? This is really important for me to know. Thanks in advance.

I have always loved looking at maps. I have combed through more editions of the Rand McNally Road Atlas than I can remember. I couldn’t tell you how many hours of my life I have lost while I have stared, studiously, at the two-page spread corresponding to the greater Los Angeles area; a fair estimate is that it is a lot of hours, give or take.

I have learned some interesting things from staring at maps. For example (speaking of L.A.): the Los Angeles city limits include this tiny little sliver, no more than a few blocks wide in places, which allows for the Port of Los Angeles to sit within the city itself; West Hollywood is a separate city (almost) completely surrounded by L.A., but North Hollywood and “regular” Hollywood are simply neighborhoods within the Los Angeles city limits; there is a small area of unincorporated L.A. County sitting in the middle of the Sepulveda Pass, though you would never know it if you were to visit; San Diego annexed the last few miles just north of the US/Mexican border, despite the fact that it is separated from the rest of the city by parts of Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, and National City.1

I have no idea if there is a name for being enamored with maps (Cartophelia? Atlophelia?), but it’s a title I might have to add to my CV.

When I look at the state, county, and city borders in the western third of the United States, I see a lot of big states with many arbitrary straight lines serving as borders. Back East, everything is all curvy and tightly-packed. I suppose that the State-Line-Drawer Dudes simply got lazy as the country expanded westward and folks didn’t bother to divide all of that empty space in places like Wyoming or Nevada into smaller chunks. If it was an eastern state, settled as a British Colony, California would probably be five or six separate states, some with a coastline, some without.

I haven’t spent more than four or five days on the East Coast, and those were spent in and around New York City. Being a Western-States kid, I can’t quite wrap my head around what it would be like to live in New England. I mean this from a purely geographic standpoint; have you seen how small Rhode Island is? Here, I could, literally, drive all day and never cross a state line. There, it would probably take like 5 minutes, give or take.

I had a few friends in college that were from the East Coast/New England, one from Jacksonville, one from Altlanta, one from Rochester, and one from outside of D.C. Just as I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how many states there are on along the Eastern Seaboard, it was weird to them that L.A. and San Francisco are a whole day’s drive apart, let alone that California keeps going for another day’s drive north of San Francisco.

Several years ago, I wrote a long-gone blog post about Staten Island. I wish I still had it—a change of web hosts and content management systems alongside my tendency to hit the “delete” key as often as possible led to some lost writing—as I remember it being kind of funny. Basically, it was this: Take a look at a map of New York City. Why is Staten Island part of New York State, let alone part of the city? You literally have to cut a chunk out of what is clearly New Jersey in order to force Staten Island into New York. (Never mind the fact that N.Y.C. doesn’t really seem to fit within New York State very easily.)

Anyway, if you happen to catch me staring at an atlas, know that I am in one of my “happy places.”

This is nothing compared to Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, which is separated from the rest of the country by 750 miles! ↩︎

I played in a semi-formal jam session last week. The music was part of a benefit event to honor my high school band director, Jeff Tower, who passed away earlier this month. The idea was that there are a lot of people who were in band and/or worked with him that are still active musicians, that a good way to “honor” Tower would be to pull many of them together and have a “jam session.”

I went into this event both excited and nervous; excited that I might get to see some friends that I haven’t seen in seventeen years or more, but nervous because my jazz playing simply isn’t what it used to be (actually, none of my playing is what it used to be). Instead of getting better since college, I have gotten worse. I know that a certain amount of this is normal. Life happens to people. But, I was still nervous going in because a “jam session” is a pretty open-ended thing, and just about anything can happen.

I was lucky enough to go to high school with two phenomenal saxophonists. One, a woman I knew as Jessica, who now goes by a stage name, is a few years older than I; the other, who says he “doesn’t play all that much anymore” but still sounds better than just about anyone I know, is a few years younger than I. I didn’t really know her all that well—high school seniors aren’t generally in the habit of befriending freshmen unless there is a specific reason to—but I knew him quite well. He and I were roommates during a summer at Idyllwild Arts, and he asked me to be his accompanist for a super-prestigious competition. Both he and she showed up at the jam session.

A woman at the event wanted to sing “All of Me.” That was straightforward. Then, when no one else on stage piped up, a certain female saxophonist said, “Let’s play ‘A Night in Tunisia.’” That’s not a difficult tune, per se, but it has some less-than-straightforward things that could benefit from at least some discussion up front. It went alright, though not without hiccup. Then, she calls “Cherokee.” “Cherokee.” “Cherokee” is the piece you play when you’re certain that the audience wants to know what a ride cymbal smells like when it starts to melt. The chord changes are not hard, but they aren’t easy either, but, then again, few things are “easy” at 250 bpm. (Also, there is that whole, tuning-my-bass-in-fifths thing ... )

My first “jam session” in over a decade, and I get to fumble my way through “Cherokee.” Sheesh!

I started playing the bass when I was sixteen. Before that, I played a bunch of other stuff: my parents bought me a small Casio keyboard when I was about eight; I started playing trumpet in fourth grade; I switched to the baritone when I got braces in eighth grade; when I got to high school, I wanted to play in the jazz band, so I switched to the trombone (luckily, my high school happened to have a valve trombone [picture a trombone with valves—like a trumpet—instead of a slide], which made switching to trombone a cinch); someone else in the trombone section broke his arm, so I had to switch to the “regular” trombone; a few months into my junior year, the girl that played bass in the jazz band quit with virtually no warning and our band director asked me to play bass. I had been taking piano lessons for a few years at that point, and had a decent grasp of music theory, and was comfortable reading bass clef ... all of which gave my band director the impression that I could play the bass.

That was on Friday. I took the school’s bass guitar home, spent the weekend trying to figure out how to play it, and returned on Monday as “the bass player.” I knew almost nothing about the bass; I knew how it was tuned and that each fret was a half-step, but everything beyond that was pretty much a mystery. I stood at the back of the band with the bass slung over my shoulder and a terrified look on my face.

From that point forward, I was a bass player, apparently.

As the semester moved along, my teacher told me he would like me to play upright bass on the pieces that called for it. “But, I don’t know how to play upright bass,” I said. He responded, “You can figure it out. It’s basically the same as the bass guitar, just bigger and without frets.” “That’s a pretty big difference!” I said. “You’ll figure out out.”

So, I started the 11th grade playing third trombone in the jazz band, and ended playing bass (both electric and acoustic). I still played euphonium in the concert band, as we were required to play in the concert band if we wanted to be in the jazz band, but I didn’t really view that as “my” instrument anymore; I spent far too much time trying to figure out how to play the bass to put much effort into practicing any other instruments.

Fast-forward to the end of my senior year, June 2000. By this point, I had attended the Idyllwild Arts Academy Summer Jazz Workshop on a full scholarship, was placed in the Riverside City College Honor Jazz Band, accompanied the eventual winner of the Los Angeles Music Center’s Young Jazz Artists competition during his preliminary auditions, and was accepted into Ricks College on a full-tuition scholarship as a jazz bassist. In a matter of about twenty months I had gone from having never played the bass, to winning awards and scholarships!

I don’t say these things to brag or congratulate myself. I say them to praise the man who set this in motion, my high school band director, Mr. Jeff Tower. Were it not for him, I would not have started playing the bass at all, and I might not have pursued music past high school. I always liked playing in the band (and singing in the choir), but it wasn’t until I started playing bass that I really loved music. Actually, that’s not entirely fair, I always “loved” music the way many people do, but once I started playing bass, music became something bigger, deeper, and far more interesting than it was before. It is impossible to know how things might have been under different circumstances, but I feel fairly confident in saying that Mr. Tower’s crazy idea of asking me to play the bass was one of those “pivotal” points that changed a lot of things for me. I owe a lot of where I am to his crazy idea.

I was a freshman at Hemet High School in 1996; Mr. Tower started teaching there in 1977. In the twenty years previous to me, Jeff Tower built a music program that attained a fair amount of fame and prestige. Hemet High School performed, more than once, at both the Playboy and Montreaux Jazz Festivals. The marching band made its way to Pasadena for the Rose Parade on a few occasions as well. By the time I got there, Hemet High School’s bands—and their director—were well known across the country (even internationally). I was lucky to inherit such prestige. To be perfectly honest, I am not so sure that the bands I was in were quite as good as some had been in the past, though we still played well— better than most of the other high school bands we encountered at various festivals. Still, the fact that Mr. Tower had laid this prestigious foundation before I arrived gave me opportunities and experiences that I would not have had elsewhere.

I had a classmate in graduate school who was a band director, professionally. He grew up in Fresno about a decade before my time. When it came out that I grew up in Hemet, and that I went to Hemet High School, he immediately perked up and told me about how envious he was of Hemet as a band student. It seemed like Hemet High School and Jeff Tower won every competition and were the “team to beat” at every stage. He said he was still using some ideas he had gleaned from Mr. Tower in his own work as a college band director. While I knew Mr. Tower was kind of famous, it didn’t really register, fully, until I ran into a few people like this as an adult.

Unfortunately, Mr. Tower passed away on July 4, 2017. He was only 63. He lost a few-year-long battle with brain cancer. The last time I remember seeing him was sometime in 2006 or 2007, when I stopped by to say hello during the school day. By that point, I was married with a kid and knee deep in graduate school stuff, but he remembered exactly who I was and even knew some details about what was happening in my life.

When I sent out announcements for my PhD commencement ceremony in 2015, I made sure that Mr. Tower got one. I didn’t expect him to come to the ceremony or the party afterward, but did want him to know where I had arrived. After all, I owed at least some of my accomplishments to his vision. The last I heard from him was a simple Facebook comment. My wife posted a picture of me (the one I am currently using as my profile picture, in fact), and said that she really liked it because I rarely look natural in photos. Mr. Tower left a two word comment on this post: “Great man.”

Mr. Tower will be missed. I count myself as lucky to have been in his band and under his educational and musical influence.

Fireworks scare the crap out of me. I’m not talking about the ones you go see at the city park on Independence Day, or the ones Disneyland lights off every night all summer long. I am talking about the ones people bring home and light off in the driveway. Am I the only one who sees these things as a brush fire and/or a few missing fingers just waiting to happen?

Growing up in Riverside County, as I did, fireworks were always illegal. The only type of fireworks you could get your hands on—including sparklers—were illegal ones. Apparently, California leaves the legality of fireworks, at least partly, up to the counties, and some counties leave that up to the individual cities. So, for me, and the other 2,189,740 people in Riverside County, fireworks and contraband were synonymous. Fireworks of all kinds are illegal here in San Diego County as well. That should mean that I never have to deal with them, but …

One summer, when I was around 10 or 11, we went to visit my cousins in Utah ... again … It was right around the Fourth of July, and we had a bunch of time to kill. My cousins lived a few blocks from K-Mart, so we walked down there since we had nothing else to do. When we got there, my cousins started looking at all of these fireworks, picking out which ones they were going to buy. My gut sank. “Do their parents know that they are buying fireworks? Do the police know that K-Mart is selling fireworks?! How am I going to explain this to my mom when I have to call her from the county jail?!”

There was this kid I knew in high school. He was notoriously mischievous. Somehow, he got ahold of a dresser drawer full of fireworks from Mexico. We went on a camping trip in Joshua Tree, and he brought some of these miniature, twirling arsonists with him. When he brandished those things, all I could picture was the entire national park going up in flames; no one would ever be able to visit Joshua Tree again, as it would simply be a bare, scorched, moonscape.

Last year, someone gave my kids some sparklers to play with on the Fourth of July. I spent the entire time those things were burning trying to keep myself from flipping out. My 7-year-old was holding a barely-under-control ball of fire six inches from his face. That is insanity!

I know that I am some sort of “prude,” and that I only feel this way because I haven’t been around fireworks enough or something. But, I am still a nervous wreck when I see those tiny sparks flying all over the place. Instead of enjoying the excitement and celebration, I keep picturing the neighbor’s dead lawn bursting into flames, which then leads to chain a reaction of the entire city burning down.

Legend has it that a cow started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. If a cow can do it, why not spinning bits of fire in the driveway?

I started wearing this small rainbow pin to church in January, 2016. I don’t wear it every week, but I never take it off of my suit jacket, so anytime I wear the suit, the pin comes along for the ride. I bought the pin as a semi-subtle form of rebellion against what I think is misguided policy/theology/doctrine that came to a head in November, 2015. Essentially, I wanted a visible indication of my dissatisfaction with the church and, more importantly, to show solidarity with my homosexual family and friends. The pin is my way of saying, “I am here for you. I am trying to make things better. I wish you felt welcome, and I hope this pin will show you that I want you to join us.”

Someone asks me about this pin every few weeks. I have gotten braver about explaining why I have it. I am not very good at talking to people, especially about controversial topics. I was especially intimidated a few months ago when an old curmudgeon-y guy asked what it was about. I kind of beat around the bush, hoping he would kind of forget that he had asked me. But, he kept asking. After I stumbled through an explanation, he said to me, “Oh. I see. I happen to agree with you, by the way.” Lesson learned: give people the benefit of the doubt.

Today, though, was different. Today, someone took this pin for what I wanted it to mean. A soft-spoken man asked me why I wore it; I told him that I had close friends and family that are homosexual and this pin was my way of showing them that I support them, and that I understand that they don’t feel welcome. He asked me if these family/friends are members of the church; I told him that some are. Then, he said, “I am in the same boat. No one here—save one other person—knows that. I only recently started coming back to church; I stopped a long time ago because I didn’t feel like I could come.” I only barely know this man. Until today, I am not even sure that we had spoken. But, this tiny pin gave us a chance to connect on a level far more intimate than the usual at-church banter, in a way that truly allowed us to “comfort those that stand in need of comfort,” and to “bear one another’s burdens.” I told him that I was glad he was there, that I am glad that he feels like he can now come and join us. I told him that I am sad that the church, its leadership and its members, have made it hard to want to join us. I told him that I will stand with him when things get ugly (as they already have, in my opinion).

Take religion out of it. Everyone needs a place to be, a place to belong. Obviously, this man has other places that he could go, but he is (bravely!) trying to make this one work for him. All of us will be better because of his bravery.

I felt humbled and uplifted by the fact that my crappy little pin made this man feel safe around me. People I love are hurting, due in part to a church I still attend. But my presence there, today, made this man feel a little more welcome and a little more appreciated just for being there.” That, folks, is what religion is supposed to be about. Stop making it about other stuff.

I took a drive up to Utah last week. My wife and I joined a 12-person relay team and participated in the Top of Zion Relay. This was the second time we have run in this event. While I am still not entirely sure that I am “a runner,” I was much more prepared this time than last.

I have driven between Southern California and various points in Utah more times than I can count. As a kid, it felt like we visited family and various tourist/historical sites up there every summer. Between my wife and I, more than half of our immediate family members live in either Utah or Idaho—my mother plus three of my four siblings, as well as my wife’s parents and two of her four siblings—despite the fact that we both grew up in California. So, we make a lot of trips to Utah.

To put it bluntly, I hate driving to Utah. (Okay, that might be putting it a bit too harshly … Let’s just say that I never look forward to it, and I always wish it to be shorter than it is.) For those that haven’t made this trek, I can sum it up pretty easily: you spend five hours driving through a desert—Las Vegas does break the monotony a bit—until you arrive at the Utah/Arizona border; then you drive through three or four more hours of barely-populated desert until you get to something that feels like “somewhere.” To be fair, there is some stunning scenery along the way, but it mostly feels like a long, dusty drive through a lot of “nowhere.” The return home is the same, only in reverse.

My maternal grandparents both grew up in a tiny town in southwestern Wyoming. It is one of those towns (or was) with only a few families, so my mom ended up with some cousins that are related on both sides. After my grandparents got married, they spent their first several years together wandering around various Wyoming locales until they decided to make a big change; California’s marketing as the land of milk and honey finally got to them and they moved to Los Angeles in the early-1950s.

My grandpa once told me about their move to L.A. He told me about what it was like to drive down the Cajon Pass, out of the desert, into San Bernardino. There was no smog then, so he could see for fifty miles, and one of the most prominent things he saw were orange groves just about as far as he could see. Once they made it all the way down the pass, they decided to stop at one of the fruit stands along the side of the road. And then, the heavens opened and angels sang as he tasted his first glass of orange juice. This, he said, was the most amazing thing he had ever tasted! There were now two parts of his life: B.O.J. and A.O.J. (before orange juice and after orange juice). The orange juice was so amazing that they stopped at every fruit stand between San Bernardino and Culver City. As far as he was concerned, this place was the Garden of Eden, and fresh orange juice was nectar straight from heaven.

When I was in college, one of the first questions we asked each other upon meeting was some variation of, “Where are you from?” I was a little embarrassed of part of my answer, but less so of the other part. I was often a little smug about the fact that I could say I was from California, which I regret; there are a lot of reasons to not be proud to be Californian, and a lot of reasons to be proud to be other kinds of -(i)an.

In graduate school, I took a class called, “Los Angeles: Texts and Contexts.” Claremont is all proud of itself for requiring everyone to take a “transdisciplinary” course; the L.A. one just happened to be what was being offered when I had room for the t-course. It was an interesting class. It was basically a look at L.A. through a variety of lenses, including some not-so-obvious ones. It was in this class that I wrote a paper about The Beach Boys, and when it came time to settle on a (new) dissertation topic three years later, I looked back on that paper and thought it might be worth expanding.

Though I am not a geographer, nor a cartographer, nor a topographer, I ended up leading a discussion about the city’s interesting geography. Basically, Los Angeles—and the rest of Southern California—is kind of like an island, surrounded on two sides by mountains, on one side by an ocean, and on another by the international border (with an uninhabited desert beyond that). The Tehachapi, Santa Monica, San Gabriel, and San Bernardino mountains make an almost unbroken northern wall, while the San Jacintos, Santa Rosas, Cuyamacas, and Lagunas do the same to the east. There are 5,500 miles of ocean to the west, and the land becomes uninhabitable about 200 miles south of Mount Wilson. Put more simply, it is a pain in the butt to get to Southern California: you either have to scale 10,000+ foot mountain ranges—after crossing hundreds of miles of desert—or sail in from some other place touching the Pacific; entering from the south is a little easier except for the fact that Baja is a really long peninsula, most of which is also empty.

Mountains, more mountains, deserts, and an ocean. (The blue dot is where I happen to be sitting right now.)

The thing is, L.A. really has no business being where it is. There is not enough water to support anything close to that size. It takes quite a bit of effort to get into or out of the area. There is no natural seaport. (Even San Diego’s bay has to be dredged to allow large ships to pass. The bay is naturally only about 5 feet deep in several places.) But, none of this has stopped 15 million people from calling this corner of the country home. (I am well aware of the complicated political finagling that allows L.A. and S.D. to access water from far away places, and am sympathetic to the problems this causes.)

Given the popular language about California one day falling into the ocean, the image of Southern California as an island is really interesting to me. So, as my wife and I were driving across the Mojave Desert on our way back home, this image of us driving to an island kept popping into my head. This makes the idea of the entire state dislocating from Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon, and floating out to sea a bit more literal. And then there is the fact that California has a larger economy than most countries, and that a sizable chunk of the U.S. couldn’t care less if we were to just float away. What if we did float away?

But, then there is the orange juice.

*Interesting side note: one of the names Natives used for the L.A. Basin translates into something along the lines of “Valley of Smoke.” Basically, the place is a magnet for smog, and it seems that it was a problem long before Europeans paved over the place.

My wonderful wife bought us two tickets to see Ben Harper (and The Innocent Criminals) as a birthday gift last month. The concert was last at the Fox Theater in Riverside, which we both thought was an odd location; certainly Ben Harper could play a “bigger, better” venue. The concert was pretty good, though I wish the “sound guys” had done a better job; like usual, there was too much bass and kick drum and not enough vocals.

Back when we lived in Pomona (while I was in graduate school), Ben Harper was something of a local celebrity. He grew up in Claremont, where his family owned a music store. Supposedly, it was fairly common to see him going about his business in the general Claremont-Pomona-Upland-Ontario area. I never did, but I knew at least one person who ran into him at a grocery store.

I grew up in Hemet, CA. It’s a crappy little town stuck at the edge of a valley with the San Jacinto Mountains rising up to the east. To the west is the rest of Southern California, with Los Angeles lying about 100 miles out. San Diego is about 100 miles to the south-southwest. Essentially, Hemet is the absolute eastern boundary of anything related to the Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego metro area; beyond it lies a steep mountain range and an unforgiving desert.

When I tell people that this is where I grew up, I usually add something like, “as awful as that sounds,” or “but I am glad I got out.” It kind of makes me sad that I feel obligated to say this.

My wife and I moved back to Hemet for about ten months in 2006/2007 when I was teaching at San Bernardino Valley College (and taking my last few classes at CGU). At that point, it had been a good six years since I had lived there “full time.” I was kind of excited to go back, as it was a familiar place and I felt like I might have a lot of “connections” there. But, being there was also kind of depressing. The town had changed a lot, mostly for the worse. It’s hard to tell, though, if things were worse or if they were always that bad and I just never noticed because it seemed normal. Moving back to Hemet was probably a mixture of both.

I have always been a little embarrassed to call Hemet home. It just seems pretty lame. There is nothing there, save huge 55+ mobile home communities, miles of orange and pomegranate orchards, some rocky, sagebrush-covered hills, and an off-white hospital and its parking lot standing a few floors above everything else in the center of town. (Other notable things are an abundance of someone else’s smog, a neighboring Indian reservation stricken with poverty, the Church of Scientology’s infamous Gold Base on the outskirts of the valley, and a larger-than-normal number of meth-lab explosions.) When I was a teenager, it was a running joke that people had little else to do but get pregnant or hide out in the orange groves doing less-than-legal stuff. (At one point, Hemet had one of highest teen pregnancy rates in California.) In brief, Hemet was/is known as a less-than-great place to live, much less grow up.

But, had I grown up somewhere else, I would have had different experiences, and would likely be a different person as a result. There are parts of me that I certainly wish were different, but I am generally pleased with where I am right now; a tenured professor at thirty-five (complete with a PhD in hand), a (mostly) happily-married father of two, living in one of the country’s more desirable locations, making payments on a decent townhouse eight miles from work (to which I am able to ride my bike when I feel so inclined). There is no way of knowing how things might be different had I spent these “growing up years” somewhere else, but, all things considered, things have turned out pretty well for me.

The Ben Harper concert was kind of like a homecoming concert for him. I am pretty sure he has played many shows in the Inland Empire since his career’s successes, but there was something different about this show, I think. He brought this up more than a few times. In fact, he got choked up at one point when he talked about how odd it felt to sing these songs in the region of the world where he wrote them. I got the impression that a large percentage of the audience was people Ben knew from his pre-rock-star phase, so this show was more than just “another show” on his tour. The audience was filled with people who had supported and nurtured him and his gratitude and love for this was pretty clear from his on-stage banter. His mother even joined him on stage for one of the songs, which was touching.

This got me thinking about hometowns, homecomings, and returns to one’s past. Toward the very beginning of the concert, Ben said something like, “Inland Empire for life!” which seemed really odd. I don’t know very many people who would proudly proclaim an association with the “I.E.” Almost everyone that I know is proud to proclaim that they got out of there, myself included. I was thinking, once, about how some artists and musicians are able to channel a place’s angst into interesting things; styles like Delta and Chicago Blues or Seattle Grunge seem like examples of this to me. Yet, here am I, dying to distance myself from my hometown’s baggage. What would all of the Inland Empire’s pollution, racial tension, and frustration sound like if someone like me didn’t run away, but let it foment into something interesting? Is that what Ben Harper is?*

I was reading an article in Rollingstone a few years ago (something I rarely do), an interview with Jack White, who was explaining why he still lived in, and loved, Detroit. Essentially, he made the case that Detroit is what brought him to the music he knows and the music he makes, so why should he want to leave? (He has since moved to Nashville, though … ) This concert and the last month of thinking about stuff has made that interview make more sense to me.

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* I actually think Ben Harper doesn’t really accomplish this. Growing up in Claremont is pretty different from growing up in Rialto or Moreno Valley; Claremont is one of the most educated cities in California, and is a very affluent area, pretty insulated from the rest of the “I.E.” Still, I think his music does do a good job of approximating much of the area’s diversity and general attitude, at least in some of his more political songs on Welcome to the Cruel World and Fight for your Mind. I think Voodoo Glow Skills might come closer to the Inland Empire that I knew: https://itun.es/us/6GAnq

$95 (labor) and a trip to San Juan Capistrano later and I am now part of the weird endpin club.

Pretty weird looking, I know.

I started playing with a bent metal endpin back in 2005. This was out of curiosity toward François Rabbath’s funky method and posture. I had seen a few of these weird endpins coming out of the bottom of basses at an angle (which traces back to Rabbath) which got me curious. So, I bought a custom-bent endpin to see what that world was all about. The bent pin is supposed to be something like “training wheels” before you go all the way with a Laborie endpin installation. My training wheels lasted eleven years.

The whole idea behind this monkey business is to make the bass a bit more ergonomically friendly. As you would probably guess, the bass is a pretty awkward instrument, so bassists—especially small ones like me—often have to make compromises when tackling the thing. A lot of the difficulties can be solved by playing seated on a stool, but now you have to carry a stool around with you everywhere (let alone an amp, stand, etc.). But, sitting has its drawbacks as well.

Anyway, this new endpin is a pretty good solution to some of the ergonomic challenges the bass presents. Among other things, it puts the bass in a more “horizontal” position, similar to what you get when you are sitting, or, better yet, to the position a cellist achieves. It also makes the bass feel lighter because its contact point with the floor is closer to its center of gravity. The biggest (and only, as far as I can see) downside is that you have to drill—have a professional drill, that is—a hole in your prized instrument. Granted, that is a pretty big deal, which is one of the reasons I put it off for ten years.

Will this make me a better player when all is said and done? Maybe. But, I think it will make me more likely to practice as I am liking the direction things are headed with this new setup; I have already made some adjustments in my playing (for the better), so I think some good things are coming.

Here is how the whole thing is supposed to work, as demonstrated by the master himself.

We currently own two cars—well, the bank owns them for another year or two—but had only one for quite a while. We moved into our current house almost exactly seven years ago. We had only one car, then.

As we were looking for a house, the feasibility of commuting to work on a bike was one of the things we tried to keep in mind. This wouldn’t be a deal breaker, per se, but it was on our list of things to consider. Our house is about eight miles from my office, which is obviously very bikable (though there is a sizable hill between here and there, so it isn’t as easy as it sounds). It took me a while before I actually started riding to work after we moved, though I did eventually do it as my normal way of getting to/from work (and other places).

But, as the kids grew, their various activities and commitments made the one-car thing pretty challenging. Thus, we bought a second car (another Prius!) a year and a half ago.

I swore up and down that the new car would not mean that I would stop riding my bike. Alas, while I didn’t stop riding to work entirely, my rides became much fewer and farther between. I used to ride to work three or four days a week, I have since been riding once or twice a month, at best. I came up with all sorts of excuses, most of which seemed perfectly legit. They probably were legit, but they were excuses that I would have dealt with when we had only one car.

I like riding a bike. One time, when I was 17 or 18, I got on my bike and rode toward the mountains. My plan was to turn around after about an hour or whenever I just felt tired enough that I needed to turn around. I ended up riding all the way to Idyllwild, a distance of 22 miles each way, with an ascent of 4,000+ feet—not too shabby for not even really planning on doing this when I left my house. I rode around on a mountain bike in the hills south of Hemet a lot when I was a teenager. I tried to keep up with mountain biking when we lived right near some nice trails in Rancho San Diego, and I always had a good time when I went for rides.

Anyway, our congregation at church is organizing in a service project wherein we are providing recent Sudanese and Iraqi refugees (those that Donald Trump and his cronies couldn’t stop) with bicycles. These folks need help with transportation to their jobs (’cause, you know, they are secret-terrorist leeches that only pretend to have jobs), and bikes can be really helpful. You, and I, and so many others have old, halfway-functioning bikes just lying around, and these people (un-extreme-vetted “Radical Islamic Extremists”) could benefit so much from them. I am excited about this project.

Just for kicks, here are some photos of my bikes. Some lucky probably-really-a-terrorist will be getting, after I give it a little TLC. (My commuter bike is still in really great shape, and I do ride it often enough that I am keeping it around. The mountain bike has only been ridden once in the three years just hanging in my garage; this is a perfect candidate for donation.)

I am planning on riding a lot more from this point forward. Please keep me accountable.